Israel's Overnight Airstrikes near Damascus Strongly Condemned by Syria
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned, in the strongest terms, Israel’s overnight airstrikes on several locations on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.
"By attacking the Syrian territory, Israel has displayed a desperate attempt to cover up its abject failures in the Gaza Strip," stated the ministry, accusing the Zionist regime of committing a new act of aggression against Syria to mask its failure in achieving declared objectives in the Palestinian enclave.
Israel's actions are seen as an effort to resist facing realities and potentially spark a regional crisis, according to a statement from the ministry on Saturday.
"Israel does not really understand that the massacre of Palestinian children and the deprivation of Palestinians of water, food, and medicine will only cement the nation’s resilience in the Gaza Strip and across the West Bank," the ministry added.
The Syrian foreign ministry emphasized Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territories as the main reason behind the ongoing Gaza conflict. It stressed that certain Western governments are complicit in Israel’s genocidal war, providing the regime’s authorities with impunity.
"The United States and Western governments have given Zionists the green light to continue killing and aggression against the Palestinian people," noted the statement.
"It is high time we stopped Israeli massacres of Palestinians and frenzied attacks on Syria and southern Lebanon before the war being waged by Zionists and their allies in the Gaza Strip spills over and spreads to new regions," the ministry highlighted.
Syria’s official news agency SANA, citing an unnamed military official, reported that the Israeli strikes occurred around 1:34 a.m. local time on Saturday (2235 GMT Friday). The missiles came from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights.
The projectiles struck some targets in the vicinity of Damascus, and Syrian air defenses shot down most of them, resulting in only "material losses," according to SANA.
The upsurge in Israel's attacks against Syria follows the Tel Aviv regime's recent onslaught against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 in response to the surprise operation dubbed Al-Aqsa Storm by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas against the occupying entity. This was a response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
According to the Gaza-based health ministry, over 15,500 Palestinians, including more than 6,500 children and 4,000 women, have been killed in Israeli strikes. Many more are feared to be under the rubble.
In addition to targeting military positions in Syria, Israel has notably focused on key locations belonging to Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement. Hezbollah has significantly aided the Syrian army in combating foreign-supported extremist factions.
Israel's response to the Syrian government's successes against terrorism often involves attacks on Syrian territories, which many see as a knee-jerk reaction to the Syrian government’s success in confronting and decimating terrorism.
Israel's support for anti-government terrorist factions has been a prominent factor since the outset of external-backed conflicts in Syria. This support has consistently opposed President Bashar al-Assad's democratically-elected administration.
